Evander Holyfield's 'Real Deal' Boxing review - Sega Megadrive

The screen shots make this look like a very impressive boxing sim. Unfortunately only the graphics fulfill their potential. The animation is very poor, and the stuttering punches make these boxers look more like characters out of a Madness video! There is no sense of flow whatsoever, which defeats any sense of realism created by the graphics. The action is so slow, I started wondering whether the fighters had been drugged! It's more like they're contemplating chess moves rather than laying punches! Much of the fault for this can be blamed on the lack of responsiveness in the joypad. This causes immense frustration when you've got an opponent on the ropes with the intention of finishing him off, but the inability to pull off fast punches prevents you from doing so. There are also some problems with the game logic, which means continuously applying a certain routine always floors your opponent. Thus the two-player option, which is usually a source of amusement, fails to satisfy. What this game has got in its favour is an excellent range of options, especially the idea of creating a player and building up his various skills. But that's why I found the poor standard of playability such a disappointment. Boxing it might be, but a knockout it certainly isn't!

If the gameplay matched the same standard of the graphics, this would be a winner. Sadly, though, the most impressive thing about this is the still screenshots. The animation of the boxers is poor (they look more like they're fawning over each other than punching), the joypad response is treacle slow and the game logic leaves the computer boxers with glass jaws - a few sessions is all you need to come up with a winning move that's guaranteed to beat each boxer every time. The presentation might be stunning, but my advice to boxing fans is to wait and see what George Foreman's and Mohammed Ali's boxing games are like before even thinking about buying this.